We started off our day at the Lafleur Homestead. This site was an easy 3 minute walk from the parking lot and boasted an old house, barn and outhouse. The doors were locked much to the boys' disappointment but at least they could peer into the windows to see a lantern and an old fashioned stove.
Our next stop was the McGuey Farm trail. Liam picked this one out of the "Walks of the Little Bonnechere River" guidebook. It sounded great - an "easy" 3 hr hike featuring homestead ruins and a cool log dam. All I can say is that this was the worst hike ever (except for maybe the non-hike we did when I got the car stuck in the slush on the way to the hike and we had to call a tow truck and abort the hike completely).
The wagon road to the McGuey Homestead started out promising but devolved into a trail absolutely littered with dozens upon dozens of fallen trees. The brush was so thick that you couldn't go around the downed trees so we were literally climbing over and crawling under trees blocking the trail - me with Alistair strapped to my back. We turned it into a game of "Duck, duck, duck, duck, GOOSE! (when he could look up again)" but really it was so awful.
If this was not bad enough, there was no cell or internet service at all. While I could see our position as a blue dot in a huge forest, my tracking app would not show the route we had hiked so far nor show the map in high enough resolution to not be blurry. Oh yes, and there were also no trail markers. This is fine when you can see the trail but, sure enough, about an hour into the hike the wagon trail we were following basically disappeared. Wonderful, I know.
In hindsight I think the (sort of) cleared area we found when the trail disappeared might have been the "homestead ruins" we were actually looking for but it certainly wasn't obvious. It was loaded with 3 foot tall, very prickly raspberry canes with a deer path running through them.
We back tracked and found the wagon trail (heavily obscured by fallen trees) going west so we continued along it for a bit longer until we got to a creek with no bridge. The "trail" was so obscure by this point that without the ability to track our position, I was not confident that going forward further I would be able to get us back out. It is always disappointing to abort a hike without reaching one's destination - we really wanted to see some homestead ruins and the old dams - but we agreed to turn around while we could still make out the trail.
Oh, did I mention the moose poop? I didn't? Well, we saw heaps of it. The idea that we could run face-to-face into a wild and very humongous forest giant really calmed my nerves throughout the whole undertaking.
After escaping from the McGuey Trail discouraged but relatively unscathed, we finished our day of exploration at the Basin Depot with a peek into the old cottage there and a quick walk out to the campground at Basin Lake. The camping spot was really lovely and Alistair was thrilled to hike this section all on his own like a big boy.
Even though the day did not go as anticipated, there is no doubt that we had ourselves an adventure. We also have a better idea of what hikes we want to tackle on our next trip out here. I can say with certainty that hiking trails littered with fallen trees is not for me. I also did not love the no cell service aspect of the hikes we did here. All this leads me to think that I may not be as adventurous a hiker as I thought I was when actually faced with the risk of getting oneself (and three children) lost in the woods with no way to call for help. I might just have to resign myself to "amateur explorer" status. I suppose there are worse things.
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